Monthly Archives: May 2009

encountering recorded music for the first time

Leave a reply


78 Blues: Folksongs and Phonographs in the American South

When … records first circulated, the very notion of recorded music was still a novelty. All music had been created live and tied to particular, intimate occasions. How were listeners to understand an impersonal technology like the phonograph record as a musical event? How could they reconcile firsthand interactions and traditional customs with technological innovations and mass media?

Recorded music at home was a radical discontinuity in musical practices!

30 seconds by here

1 Reply

While I was drinking coffee this morning it struck me that it might be useful to someone to have 30 seconds of instrumental guitar alone to reuse for an announcement, ad, or connector between segments. Something along the lines of clip art.

The melody is based on the traditional song “Jesus Will You Come By Here.” The feel is like ragtime. The instrument is a National Estralita resonator guitar, a Lace pickup, a Tube MP preamp, and Audacity . It took about 15 takes to get everything just right.

Creatively, this was fun to do. I like minimalism.

Legally, I hereby put this work in the public domain. You can use it in any Creative Commons work, or even in a television commercial. You don’t even have to give credit, though I would appreciate it.

gun shot divider animated gif

1 Reply

gun shot divider animated gif

This is all kinds of retro — as web design it’s circa ’95, as graphic design it’s 50s, and in some sense or another it hearkens back to the 1860s or so.

The original URL was on geocities, by the way: http://www.geocities.com/alabamahillsgang/gunshotdivider.gif

.

Baton Rouge Rag

Leave a reply

Baton Rouge Rag (mp3) performed by Oscar “Buddy” Woods with Kitty Gray and her Wampus Cats. Recorded October 30, 1937 in San Antonio, Tx.; Kitty Gray, vocal and piano; Oscar Woods and Joe Harris on guitar.


I picked up an album called Texas Slide Guitars: Oscar “Buddy” Woods & Black Ace and dug it enough to get to know all the songs. There’s one that always catches my ear even though it sounds different than the others, or maybe because it sounds different. The song is called “Baton Rouge Rag” and it’s credited to Kitty Gray & Her Wampus Cats with Oscar “Buddy” Woods.

I’ve been wanting to learn the song on guitar so I looked it up to see if I could find sheet music or other recordings. What I found was a 1940 field recording.

Baton Rouge Rag (mp3) performed by Joe Harris. Recorded October 1940 in Shreveport, Louisiana.


So who wrote the song? Well, at the end of the 1940 recording there’s a short interview. Alan Lomax asks Joe Harris where the song comes from. Harris first says he wrote it and then says he learned it from a trumpet player back in 1907, 33 years before during the heyday of ragtime. Harris doesn’t say and probably doesn’t know who the composer was, and he’s spent so many years digesting and reframing the song that he considers it his own composition in a way.

Between these two recordings a transcription should be very doable. I didn’t find any sheet music source or other record of the composition, so it’s inspiring that this tune survived by being passed from musician to musician.

Hikes Without Mics Joshua Tree Adventure

1 Reply

I’m playing a Natural Stage Project (aka “Hikes Without Mics”) field trip to Joshua Tree National Park tomorrow, which I expect to be fun, sweet and ridiculous. Here’s my blog from the last time I did a Hikes W/out Mics thing:

In practice what this meant was a longish walk on a barely-visible trail by a creek, at the the end of which was a pretty waterfall with a woman standing in front of it to sing indie-rock type songs while she accompanied herself on ukelele. I did the hike with my Estralita on my back in a gig bag for bass, and instead of the bowler and brogans I usually wear I had a coonskin cap and psychedelic emerica sneaks. I ran into Pamita halfway up the path. She was rocked out in cowboy boots, a dress, and fishnets, which is an outfit that’s just slightly better adapted to scrambling over boulders than the corset she usually wears.

There was no real crowd to speak of, but there were plenty of musicians there to play and play for. The acoustics out in the forest were special and listening to the other acts was a profound pleasure.

Because the issue is lurking, I should point out that this was not a Grateful Dead setup like a drum circle. These people knew irony. The tactic is along the same lines as a dance party on the subway, where a group meets up at a subway car and dances to electronic music on a boom box for a few stops, then gets off and disperses. This was an acoustic flash mob.

Something I love about playing is the way it draws me into unexpected places. I end up in places I would never have gotten to go to, meeting people at events I wouldn’t have been invited to, like this one. So cool.

And afterwards in Historic Pioneertown:

A cosmic prehistoric natural environment, and an indie rock honky tonk bar and grill, 2 hours away with cheap lodgings. Stunning monster rocks, a movie-set town for 40s Westerns, spacerock, country/rock DJs, danceparty, hottub, and general good times. ALSO! Daytime acoustic concert in the park at Jumbo Rocks put on by The Natural Stage Project’s “Hikes Without Mics”… info on that here.

Pappy & Harriet’s is an honky tonk in historic Pioneertown that books both country and psychedelic indie rock like Cat Power, Spindrift etc.